'It smells like something dead,' tourist Meghan Brummett, told the Daily Mirror, as she gazed upon the devastation.

Actually, that would be the smell of a renewed lease on life.

In the 1970s, the brown pelican was hovering near extinction thanks to the liberal use of the pesticide DDT. To revive their numbers, La Jolla enacted strict environmental legislation that has since allowed the pelican to surge back. With a population at around 650,000, the species was removed from the endangered species list in 2010.

But with prosperity comes poop.

Telling a local newspaper the droppings are "a potential public health disaster" restaurant owner George Hauer has started an online petition hoping to convince city authorities to take action.

“I’ve lived here my whole life, and the smell from the birds has never, ever been as bad as it is now,” business owner Megan Heine told the New York Times.